[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 86 (Wednesday, June 28, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6609-S6611]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ENERGY
Mr. SALAZAR. Madam President, let me first say my colleague from
North Dakota does an incredible job in terms of leading our country
with a voice that stands for fiscal discipline. When he talks about the
mountain of debt that we are continuing to build in this country, and
passing on that mountain of debt to our children and our grandchildren,
the American people deserve more of this Congress and more of
Washington, DC, and more of this President. I look forward to his
continuing leadership on this issue to try and bring about fiscal
integrity and fiscal honesty to the United States of America. The
American people deserve no less than that kind of candor and integrity
from the Senate.
I rise today to talk about an urgent issue which we all ought to be
very concerned about in the United States of America. That is the issue
of energy. Last year, this Senate put together a bipartisan template on
the National Energy Policy Act of 2005 which may go down in our history
as being one of the most important achievements of the 109th Congress.
Notwithstanding
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the fact that we put together energy legislation that did some great
things for conservation, that stood out for renewable energy, that said
that new technologies were part of how we could lock in the future of
our Nation's energy independence, we have had many opportunities to
move forward and to continue to address the issue of energy. Yet we
have not done that as a Congress nor as a Senate.
Six months of this year have already passed. It has been 5 months
since the President of the United States, before the American people,
said that we were addicted to foreign oil and we needed to take
aggressive steps to move forward to get ourselves to energy
independence.
I had the honor of hosting the President at the National Renewable
Energy Lab in Golden, CO, and we looked at the possibility of renewable
energy. Yet some 6 months after that January speech, we still are here
in this Senate without having moved forward with any significant kind
of energy legislation. That is wrong. Part of the people's business,
the highest priority, is for us to look at this energy dilemma we are
facing in this country and to embrace in a real, honest, and ethical
way the imperative that moves us toward energy independence.
I will address part of what I think we ought to be doing with our
movement toward energy independence in our country today. The time to
get serious about growing our way to energy independence is long
overdue. If Brazil, a Third World country, can do it, it is inexcusable
for the United States of America, the strongest Nation on Earth, to do
otherwise.
Today in Brazil, ethanol substitutes for 204,000 barrels of gasoline
sold every day. Over 40 percent of all the gasoline that is sold
nationally in Brazil comes from ethanol, making that country energy
independent today.
In the last couple of months, we have had a lot of ideas discussed in
this Senate and through multiple press conferences about how we can
ease the pain at the pump for the American consumers. We have heard
ideas to give $100 tax rebates. We heard ideas to create a tax holiday
for gas, to enact a Federal gas price-gouging statute, to reduce the
number of fuels that are currently on the market, to end royalty
relief, and on and on. There are lots of ideas talked about that we
should give careful consideration.
We should also talk straight to the American people. We are a nation
that relies on oil to power our economy. We import almost 60 percent of
our oil from countries such as Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Iraq, and
Venezuela. We are hostage to a cartel of oil-producing countries that
decide how much oil will reach the market at any given moment. Many
Members of this cartel are unfriendly to the United States. They know
how much power their oil has over our national security.
The bottom line is that energy independence is important to all of us
in the 21st century if we are to achieve national security.
Without a reliable and affordable supply of homegrown energy, our
dependence on foreign oil will only continue to increase, further
warping our foreign policy and jeopardizing the stability of our
economy. If we continue at our current pace, in two decades we will be
importing 70 percent of our oil from foreign countries. We cannot
afford to stay that course on our energy policy.
Expanding our domestic production of oil and gas is an important
component in our Nation's movement toward energy independence. We
should continue to encourage the balanced development of the resources
that we have. We should accelerate our development of clean coal
technologies to produce clean-burning synfuel gases and jet fuels from
coal, an abundant domestic resource. But none of the rhetoric can
change the fact that we just don't have enough petroleum resources in
this country to drill our way to energy independence.
Today, we are the world's third leading producer of oil, but our rate
of oil consumption--primarily for transportation--is almost three times
our rate of oil production. Furthermore, the sad truth is that we only
have 3 percent of the world's reserves in the United States of America.
That 3 percent includes the proven reserves in the State of Alaska.
We ought to look at our renewable energy future. If we make a
dramatic, perhaps even a revolutionary new commitment to renewable
energy, the fuel grown in American fields can help power our vehicle
fleet. With a bold new commitment, we can produce enough fuel on our
farm lands and ranch lands to meet 25 percent of our energy needs by
the year 2025.
Farmers and ranchers and all of rural America are rallying behind
this cry for a goal of ``25 by 25.'' Our farmers are growing corn,
soybeans, and sunflowers to be used for ethanol and biodiesel. Ranchers
are building windfarms and using animal manure for power. Rural
business men and women are investing in biorefineries. New jobs are
springing up in many places where they had no jobs. Rural economies,
long forgotten, are starting to gather steam as part of the renewable
energy chapter opens in America.
It is time for Congress as a whole to embrace rural America's vision
for this renewable energy future. Senator Chuck Grassley and I have
introduced a resolution that would make ``25 by 25'' our national goal.
I urge my colleagues to cosponsor this resolution because producing
25 percent of our energy on agricultural lands by 2025 is, in fact, a
fully achievable goal. We can do it. We can do it if we get on task and
we make a bipartisan commitment to work toward this goal. We should
begin on this goal immediately.
First, we should raise the renewable fuel standards we set in last
year's Energy Policy Act. That goal, in law today, is to produce 7.5
billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2012. That goal is far too
modest. We will easily meet this goal under current policies. Yet we
will not be putting enough renewable fuels on the market to give
consumers a real choice or to make a real dent in our oil dependence on
foreign countries. We should increase this target so we are producing 9
billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2012 and 30 billion gallons of
renewable fuel by the year 2025.
Second, we should extend the renewable energy production tax credit
until 2012. The existing production tax credit is now set to expire in
2007. That creates uncertainty for business people and investors who
want to invest in renewable energy.
We have legislation that I have introduced, S. 1093, the Research and
Development Investment Act, which extends the renewable energy
production tax credits through 2012, allowing more investment and
quicker growth in the renewable energy market.
Next, we should pass S. 2025, the Vehicle and Fuel Choices for
American Security Act. This is an important piece of legislation with
broad bipartisan support. S. 2025 will essentially do three simple but
very important conceptual things.
First, it will increase the amount of biofuels we currently are
producing in America. Second, it will ensure there are filling stations
that are available across the country that will provide alternative
fuels to give that choice to the American consumer. And, third, it will
also help transform Detroit to embrace alternative fuel vehicle
systems.
Right now, the United States consumes around 20 million barrels of
oil every day. Twenty million barrels of oil every day are consumed in
America. Two-thirds of those 20 million barrels a day are consumed in
our transportation system--by our cars and our trucks--across this
country. This is alarming: The massive amount of oil we are importing
is barley enough to cover the needs of the transportation sector.
S. 2025 tackles this problem head on. It brings more gallons of
biofuels to the market. It gives consumers access to alternative fuels.
It retools America's vehicle fleet to run more efficiently and to run
on alternative fuels. By passing S. 2025, we will give consumers more
choices of fuels and vehicles, lower and stabilize the cost of fuel,
and reduce our reliance on foreign oil.
This is not a Republican or Democratic agenda. This is an American
agenda. And this American agenda toward energy independence is
demonstrated by the group of Senators who are supporting S. 2025. They
include Senator Brownback, Senator Bayh, Senator Graham, Senator
Cantwell, Senator Lieberman, Senator Coleman, Senator Dodd, Senator
Bill Nelson, Senator Isakson, Senator Kohl, Senator Lugar, Senator
Obama, Senator
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Sessions, Senator Clinton, Senator Chafee, and others. We think this
bill is effective, and we would hope the Senate can move forward and
embrace this bill and pass it so the President can sign it yet this
year.
What S. 2025 does, in more detail, is it is aggressive in encouraging
the increased production of biofuels. It provides loan guarantees to
farmer-owned ethanol producers, to help them make investments in
renewable energy systems and infrastructure. It also increases the
ethanol infrastructure tax credit that we passed last summer in the
Energy Policy Act so that credit is set at 50 percent. This will lower
the startup costs for farmers and communities and businesspeople who
want to build a biorefinery or a processing plant.
These producers will benefit from the bill's investments in biofuels
research. By doubling the funding for biofuels research, S. 2025 will
improve yields and efficiencies and expand the range of feedstocks that
can be used for biofuels production.
Secondly, S. 2025 helps reduce our foreign oil dependency by giving
consumers access to alternative fuels at filling stations. Currently,
in the United States, we have 5 million flexible fuel vehicles. These
vehicles can run on either gasoline or E-85, an 85-percent ethanol-
gasoline mix. We today are adding about 1.5 million of these flex-fuel
vehicles to our national fleet every year. The trouble is, as you well
know, there are only 485 filling stations in the country that carry E-
85. There are only 485 filling stations today in the country that carry
E-85. We have the technology on the road that allows cars to run on
biofuels, but because consumers cannot pump E-85 fuel at their local
filling station, we are not taking full advantage of the oil-saving
rewards of the flex-fuel technology, which is now being deployed into
our national fleet.
S. 2025 would solve this problem. It would solve this problem by
helping to build the pumps and filling station infrastructure needed to
deliver biofuels to consumers. The bill provides loan guarantees and
tax incentives to farmers and business owners for the construction of
pump stations to dispense fuels. It also uses CAFE penalties that have
already been collected by the Government from foreign manufacturers to
expand funding for grants to finance alternative fueling
infrastructure.
One of the DOE grantees from this year alone, the National Ethanol
Vehicle Coalition, will be able to build 300 stations with its $2
million grant. With at least 10 times the amount of that funding
available, we should be able to equip at least 3,000 filling stations
across America with the infrastructure that delivers biofuels to
consumers who are in search for these alternative fuels.
The economic benefits of giving these fuel choices to consumers are
clear. If consumers can rely on filling their tank with E-85 fuel
wherever they go, demand for the fuel and demand for cars that run on
E-85 will increase dramatically, cutting demand for petroleum-based
fuel. Not only will this help us deal with gas prices, but it will also
stabilize them. We can count on our farmers to harvest their crops, but
we cannot count--we cannot count--on Iran or the Middle East to sell us
their oil.
Finally, S. 2025 will help us retool our national vehicle fleet. S.
2025 sets goals for improving the efficiency of our vehicle fleet and
for getting more advanced vehicles on the road. It sets these goals and
then helps manufacturers retool their vehicle fleets to meet them.
The bill sets targets for manufacturers to produce alternative fuel
vehicles, plug-in hybrids, fuel cell vehicles, flexible-fuel vehicles,
and other technologies which can run on regular gasoline or biofuel
alternatives. By 2012, 1 in 10 vehicles produced will be advanced
vehicles. By 2016, 1 in 2 vehicles produced will be advanced vehicles
that can run on these alternative fuels or these advanced technologies.
We will help manufacturers make these changes to their fleets. The
bill establishes a tax credit for the costs the manufacturers incur
when they are retooling or expanding their facilities to produce
advanced vehicles. The bill also authorizes support for research that
will provide lightweight materials to the auto industry and for
technology for electric drive trains, batteries, and plug-in hybrids.
The bill closes the SUV tax loophole, limits idling by buses, and
requires that fuel economy standards be set for heavy duty vehicles so
we can stop burning fuel we do not need to burn. For each 1 mile per
gallon efficiency we find in this country, we save 1 million barrels of
oil per day, or $20 billion a year.
These are sensible, easy-to-implement solutions. Many of them, many
of these ideas, have now been included in two bills that Senator
Bingaman, Senator Chafee, Senator Lieberman, Senator Coleman, Senator
Cantwell, and I and others have introduced. These are the Enhanced
Energy Security Act of 2006, which will push the Federal Government to
save 2.5 million barrels of oil per day by 2016, and at least 10
million barrels per day by 2031, and the new energy tax bill, which
provides multiple incentives to manufacturers, businesses, and
consumers alike to utilize energy-efficient programs and alternatives
themselves.
The provisions of S. 2025 and the energy tax bill will give consumers
more choices at the pump and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Each of us should be asking: What if we do nothing? What if we do
nothing? What if we continue our malignant neglect of the long-term
energy policy of the United States of America? If we do continue this
malignant neglect, we will become increasingly vulnerable to the
instabilities and whims of countries across the globe. The American
consumer will continue to suffer, and the American economy will have
lost an opportunity that has come its way.
We have devoted a lot of time to many issues over the last 6 months
of this year in this Congress. We have not devoted enough time on this
floor to the issue of energy and of energy independence. We need to do
so because to do otherwise is to neglect the national security of the
United States.
When you have a system that starts to break down, you have to address
the cause as well as the symptoms of the problem. If your roof keeps
springing leaks, you don't just put more and more buckets out. What you
do is you eventually build yourself a new roof. We need to build a new
energy policy in America, one that is built on the promise of renewable
energy, technology, and conservation.
I believe Americans are eager for us as a Senate to do this. In
States across the country, people are enacting renewable portfolio
standards and demanding access to alternative energies. They imagine a
renewable energy future that harnesses the business and work ethic of
rural America and which breathes new life into sagging rural economies.
They look at fields of corn, soy, and sunflowers and see the raw
materials for biodiesel and for ethanol.
The renewable energy revolution is already underway in America thanks
to farmers and ranchers and businesspeople who have been leading it,
who have been doing their part. We now, as a Congress, need to do our
part to push the renewable energy revolution forward.
I urge our Senate, in a bipartisan fashion, following the template of
last year's national Energy Policy Act, to move forward to secure
America's renewable energy future by making ``25 by 25'' our national
goal.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thune). The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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